


We All Fight Together

by Wandering_Swain



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Canon compliant with ending, F/M, Family Feels, Gay Rights, Hurt/Comfort, Is my kid gay?, Kid Fic, Kid Peter Parker, M/M, Ohana means family and family means no one gets left behind, Or maybe bi?, Original Character(s), References to Drugs, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, Some women don't want to be moms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 02:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11476434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Swain/pseuds/Wandering_Swain
Summary: May Parker is never "Mom," but she is Peter's, and he is hers.From the day May and Ben bring Peter into their lives, through her one date with Tony Stark, and up until she learns where Peter's been going in the middle of the night.





	We All Fight Together

**Author's Note:**

> Meredith Quill from Guardians of the Galaxy makes a cameo because we all deserve a random, drunk girl telling us we're beautiful.
> 
> No beta reader used. All mistakes mine.

When May learns Ben has agreed to take care of Peter, she has just taken a massive hit. Her friend, Magda, is over, and brought some kush bought from a younger co-worker. She said the name was “The Merry Widow” and May and her are trying to figure out if that’s a name of a ship that had sunk or what. They sit on her couch as they rack their brains, the air sour with beer and sweet with smoke.

“Is this like the stuff you brought that one time where I swear I could see everyone’s molecules?” May knew at once she should have asked beforehand. In the life she and Ben had made together, her priorities haven’t much changed between twenty-one and forty-one, which was sure nice, you know? She deserves an adulthood with some fun, but she likes to think she’s learned more than a couple things in the last two decades.

Magda giggles. “I remember that. We had shrooms beforehand.”

May remembers the way everything had been tinged with rainbows. It was beautiful. 

Someone knocks at the door and May shouts, “Ben!” like she was a puppy. They had considered a dog at some point, but much like considering a child, it just doesn’t fit. May doesn’t trust herself.

Ben stands on the threshold with their nephew. The boy clings to Ben’s jeans, holding his Captain America backpack. Intellectually, May knows he’s five-years old, but he looks closer to three or four. It’s only his glasses that make him look older, his gaze as he stares up at her quizzical rather than like a blank teddy bear.

“Hey,” Ben manages weakly. He seems embarrassed, glancing at Magda. With his magnificent eyebrows, he tries to signal her to put the bong away.

Magda doesn’t seem to get it.

May switches gears with more ease. She crouches down in front of the kid so she’s his height. “Hey, you! How’s my favorite little guy?”

“Peter is--”

“Peter! Yes.” May definitely hadn’t forgotten the kid’s name due to the haze.

“Peter has to stay the night with us,” Ben finishes.

May looks up at him furtively, forcing a smile. “That’s so great! And sudden! Great and sudden!”

Ben nodds quickly. “I was telling Peter about the time I promised his Mom and Dad we would take him for the night any time, whenever.”

“Back when he was born.” May takes the boy’s hand. It’s so tiny. He grabs back right away, instant trust. Maybe he remembers her. “Yes. Way back then. What a promise! A good promise.”

“He’s a button!” Magda enthuses.

May turns to see Magda packing up her stuff. This includes the kush but not the bong, which sits at the center of the scratched coffee table with murky water still in it.

Ben looks white.

Peter pushes his glasses farther up his nose. “Were you having a party?”

May reels. A complete sentence! “A little. You’re just so smart!”

“Am I interrupting?” 

“No! No. Magda was leaving, anyway,” says Ben.

“I am.” Magda is not super into kids. She doesn’t hate them, but like May, she doesn’t consider herself mom material. She smiles as she puts on her shoes and gives Ben a hug. “See you around, slugger!”

“We can have our own party,” May says to Peter. She has been drinking but isn’t drunk, is high but not seeing any molecules. “What do you like? Sesame Street?”

Peter looks out the window. “It’s night. It’s not on.”

“We’ll find something,” says May. She takes his backpack and hangs it on the coat hook, between her ratty parka and Ben’s rain coat.

Ben guides Peter to the couch and grabs the bong. He bolts for the kitchen. “Let me just get some flowers for this vase, kiddo.”

“Why?” Peter sinks into the middle of the couch, which looks a lot more threadbare next to him. He’s all in bright colors, his overalls a deep, new blue, not the acid washed jeans Ben wears. His shirt is Crayola crayon red.

May turns on their television at once. “Oh! Look! King Kong’s on! Do you like monkeys?” It looks like the new movie the Lord of the Rings guy had just made, too.

Peter is doubtful but he watches and becomes absorbed right away. He is, thank God, not the kind of kid who seems to run around a lot. May remembers her mom describing her three-year old self as a “runner.”

And the movie affects are pretty cool, you know? May finds herself fascinated by the island, too.

Ben signals her from the kitchen and May joins him. “What happened? Business trip?” she hisses. “They had a whole list of sitters, last I heard.”

“Car accident.”

May goes cold.

“I think he changed the emergency contact to my name when Dad died.” Ben massages his temples. He likes his brother a whole lot, but they could go weeks without saying a word to each other. May, with her extended Irish-Italian Catholic family that’s always in each other’s houses, phone lines, and business back in New Jersey, finds it confusing that this was how they liked it.

“Jesus. How bad is it? Did you talk to them?”

“I didn’t. They were out.”

“Fuck.” She looks over at Peter, who thankfully doesn’t look up, and lowers her voice. “With what?”

“Richard has internal bleeding. Mary’s brain is swelling. They’re. May, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but it doesn’t look good. The hospital promised to give me a call.”

May remembers Mary and Richard’s wedding. A big, proper thing, out in upstate New York, flower center pieces, minimal relatives screaming at each other. Her and Ben’s wedding was in a judge’s office; their wedding brunch was at Denny’s followed by an after party where they roamed from Hell’s Kitchen to Queens in a pack of their friends. Then they bought tickets to Mexico for the honeymoon. She doesn’t regret it, but Mary and Richard always have it so much more together. They’re more khaki slacks and sweater vest people, matching graduate degrees, good folks that May was comforted in knowing existed in the world.

A car accident makes a lot of sense, weirdly. It’s what happens to nice people who have nothing to do but offer good to the world.

“We can see if my mom can take him in,” says Ben, softly. “If this is longer than a night.”

May doesn’t care for Ben’s mom much. Strict, religious. “Let’s talk about that tomorrow.” She goes to join Peter on the couch.

Ben returns from the kitchen with a bong full of dandelions from the window box. He watches with them. Every few minutes, he stares down at his phone.

The movie, despite the presence of a giant monkey, isn’t exactly for kids. It’s violent and a bunch of folks on the island die real quickly. This seems really stupid to May. “Why make a giant monkey movie just for adults?”

“He’s a gorilla,” says Peter.

Ben smirks. “Is he?”

Peter nods. “They’re bigger.”

“You like animals?”

Peter does. He ignores the movie and climbs off the couch. Then he goes to the coat rack and looks up at his bag. He stands on his toes but he can’t reach it. 

May remembers being that small herself. As a kid, you can’t do much of anything yet on your own, like reach the top shelves in the kitchen, much less drink or own a car. Maybe it’s the pot, but she can’t help but feel a little guilty about a world built for adults but where each one of those adults had once been a kid.

She helps Peter get his backpack down.

In it, there’s a magazine with a leopard on the front. He comes back to the couch and begins to show it to Ben. The kid turns the pages and points at a panther, a lion, and a peacock. May thinks he’s reading from it until she realizes he’s making up a story.

“And the cat said, ‘I’m gonna eat you up,’ and the bird said, ‘No, you won’t. Because I’ll peck you in your eye.’”

May can’t suppress a smile. It’s lower budget entertainment than Peter Jackson’s stuff, but she turns off the movie anyway. 

Ben goes along with it like a pro. He asks Peter what each animal says and why they say it.

May’s the one who doesn’t want kids. Ben’s always insisted he’s fine either way, but she catches him looking at strollers driven by nannies when they’re in Midtown. Of course people always wonder about leading different lives, but he has a comfort with kids she doesn’t.

She glances at the bong in the center of the table. Dandelions or not, this small apartment was no place for Peter.

She likes him well enough, though, but more as a separate human being than as a child. He “reads” them the magazine three times through and they let him.

Around eight, he lays down on the couch and automatically pulls a blanket over himself. May goes to her bedroom to get a pillow for him, but he’s already out by the time she gets back.

Ben gets the call at nine. It’s not just bad, it’s the end.

May wants to throw up.

They let Peter sleep, even though they can’t sleep at all. May goes to the corner bodega for pancake mix because she can’t think of anything else to do. Kids like pancakes, right? The only other breakfast food in the apartment, technically, is coffee.

Peter wakes up at two-first, crying. At first, May's scared he heard, but no. He wet his bed. He's afraid they'll yell.

The idea of telling him then is ridiculous. Finding out you're an orphan when your clothes are damp and uncomfortable sounds like a specific kind of hell.

Instead, Ben helps him undress, and May gives him a bath. Their tub is about the size of a wash basin, because this is Queens after all, but Peter fits it perfectly. She pours twice as much recommended pink bubble bath into the water (her own treat when her cramps get bad, not too many years of those left, thank Christ) and watches him laugh as the bubbles pour out of the tub and onto the floor.

May laughs, too. Then she feels sick again.

She has kept so many secrets in her time, starting with, "No, Mom, I didn't sneak out of the house and go to a bar, I'm seventeen." Others are lies she hasn't minded telling, like in 1987, when she told another drunk girl in the bathroom that she was beautiful. It was during a Guns N’ Roses concert. Her name was Meredith and she said she had just started chemo, but she had to see them one last time. Could anyone tell, she asked? And May said, "No. You look perfect," and they spent the rest of the concert as best friends the way only two drunk girls can be, holding hands and telling each other how gorgeous they were.

This is a lie like that, she decides as she helps Peter wash.

She puts him back to bed, this time in the one she and Ben share. He sleeps between them. May doesn't sleep at all, even freaks out a couple times thinking he has stopped breathing, but he doesn't. He watches his still face, his narrow chest as it rises and falls.

May leaves the bed in the morning to make burned pancakes. She and Ben sit Peter down at the table before they tell him. Each word comes out of Ben’s mouth like it’s trying to punch out of his throat.

Peter’s expression fades. Goes hard, then soft. He cries, again, and says, "No, no, no, no, please, no, no, no!"

Ben is the one who holds him and says things will be okay.

May has to go to the bathroom to cry. This is one lie Ben can tell.

But things are okay. Not better, but different.

May finds herself scheduling her life around helping the kid to and from kindergarten. She attends child grief counseling a few times to watch Peter play with blocks and color. She goes to his school plays, which involve screeching songs and children dressed in unconvincing alligator and sunflower costumes. 

She meets parents, some her age, most younger. Feeling strange in jeans and faded t-shirts, she starts buying more print dresses and skirts.

Ben makes fun of her, but he's the one to join a gym first and go on a diet to "keep down his cholesterol," so she gets to laugh, too.

"I have to worry about living longer, now," he says, defensive. "Who will help Peter if he needs a loan in his forties and I'm dead?"

She laughs harder. But she joins that same damn gym, too.

May and Magda still hang out, but usually when Peter's at school. Magda giggles when she sees the crayon art on the fridge and the toy robots on the floor. They both curse when they accidentally step on Legos with their bare feet. This leads to May’s first rule as a guardian: all Legos back in the toy box after use.

Peter is doubtful in regards to this rule. So is May, because toys are more fun when you don’t have to clean up after yourself, but she does her best to stand firm.

Ben and May were a team before, but now they’re a unit. They fight together. They take on the bed wetting and the bouts of flu the kid gets, no matter how many shots he has through out the year. They take on his scoliosis, trips to the optometrist, and his persistent shyness around strangers. 

May learns how to give those back rubs her mom was always so good at giving after she has nightmares. She learns how to get up at the crack of dawn to make Peter's lunch when he starts grade school while Ben helps pick out his clothes for the day.

Peter doesn't call them "mom" and "dad." Which is fine. They aren't.

They're not his mom and dad when they hold his hands on roller coasters, take him to the science museum, or yell at his shitty private tutor who tries to give the kid a drink of beer while sitting too close to him on the couch.

They're not his mom and dad when the Battle of New York hits Midtown they sit in the basement of their apartment building for hours. They play Go Fish and Uno as the ceiling shakes above them and May doesn't actually know if there will be a tomorrow. When she feels Peter bury his nose in her shoulder, she hopes there will be.

No, they're not his parents, but he belongs to them. 

It takes May a while to realize this means they belong to him, too. 

She isn’t an idiot, but she wasn’t a model student. Her strengths were art class and, by senior year, ditching study hall to smoke butts in the parking lot, but she's not always been very quick on the uptake.

Peter is. He’s amazing at school. Like, gets the answers done in record time for every test, makes A's as quickly as breathing, and when he says he wants to go to Midtown School of Science and Technology in Forest Hills, of course the answer is yes.

Ben sighs. "He's got us wrapped around his finger."

"He's getting a scholarship there," May says quickly. "We can cover the rest."

"As long as he doesn't need braces. Or buy a car and crash it."

"His teeth are perfect, first of all," she says. "And secondly, it's Peter. When I took him for a test drive in the mall lot, I had to keep telling him to go faster. He was like a turtle."

Ben chuckled, rubbing his temples and the graying hair there. "You think he hangs the moon. I'm almost jealous."

After Ben is mugged and shot, May spends a lot of time feeling like she’s been submerged in ice. 

She takes endless showers. 

She wakes up each morning and, when she remembers he's dead, tries to go back to sleep. 

Her biggest drive to get up is to pack Peter’s lunches, to burn their breakfast as she watches him sit at the kitchen table with a look no fourteen-year old should have.

Magda brings macaroni casserole. After one look around the apartment, she decides to stay a while. She sleeps on the couch and bring in the mail when May doesn’t feel up to it.

“We should buy Ben a memorial,” Magda says one day. “Or, I don’t know, something.”

Peter, overhearing them from the kitchen, suggests a Viking funeral.

Ben has a gravestone in the cemetery, buried between his brother and a plot that will one day be May's. So, no, it's not a Viking funeral with a body.

What they do is take Ben's least favorite suit, one of his Jimmy Buffett Hawaiian shirts, and his favorite Grateful Dead album. Peter finds a wooden crate in the garbage. When they set it on the Hudson, it floats.

Peter throws in Ben's stuff. The kid stopped wearing glasses weeks ago, claiming he now prefers contacts, so she can see just how wet his eyes are.

Magda opens a bottle of tequila and pours it on, worm and all. 

"No champagne?" May raises her eyebrow at Magda, trying to communicate her sarcasm. It's hard, though. She feels disconnected from her own face.

"You went on your honeymoon in Mexico," Magda says, softly. "I remember some things."

May remembers the iguanas in the desert, the markets full of flowers and smelling like rosemary, and Ben saying, "Let's stay in bed all day, naked. See what the hotel staff has to say about that."

Instead of crying, she pours on the gasoline and lights a match.

They watch, solemn, as it burns a trail along the black, midnight water. 

When the box sort of explodes, Peter says, "I think that was too much gasoline."

They hear sirens in the distance.

All three run. Magda splits from them, saying she'll call May tomorrow as she runs toward the subway.

May and Peter stay together, running and holding hands. She laughs. "You throw some good parties, Pete!"

He gives her a guilty smile.

Things get a little odd after that. He starts going elsewhere after school every day, sometimes not answering her texts for hours. He wolfs down his dinner and sneaks out after lights out (self-imposed, mostly; she hasn't given him an official bedtime since he was eleven and she caught him folding his own socks). 

He tells her casually that he's quitting band.

She smiles, says nothing, and sniffs his breath for booze. 

None. 

She searches his room for drugs, which she feels weird about but knows it's well within her rights as a guardian. She finds only his tech equipment, all naked wires and old iPods. In his sock drawer, she finds nothing more incriminating than his glasses, neatly folded in their case. She thinks it’s odd she can’t find a case for contacts or solution.

May discovers the heart-shaped sewing kit is there and probably has been there for some time. Of course she wouldn’t notice it being gone. She mainly uses it to patch up holes because she’s as skilled with stitch work as she is with cooking. 

The box is next to some skeins of faux silk, spandex, and chiffon.

Chiffon, for God’s sake, clenched in the teeth of a portable sewing machine in his closet.

May does some more detective work. She finds out he mostly hangs out with his little friend Ned, these days, who claims Peter doesn't have a girlfriend after some gentle prodding. 

Oh, she thinks. Is that all? She's so relieved.

And Peter's always been sensitive, isn't into sports, and always looks awkward around girls. She had assumed the last was because he was so overwhelmed by hormones, but what if he was detaching himself because he was disinterested?

The sewing could mean he's gay, but it could also mean he just likes to dress up in women's clothing. (Was it "crossdresser," now? Was “transvestite” offensive? Fuck, she was out of the loop. She watched a couple episodes of Ru Paul's Drag Race and mainly felt more entertained than enlightened.)

May, who prides herself on being a little bit fashionable, doesn't see any of her own outfits missing, but doubts they would even fit Peter. He would look much cuter in stuff for flat-chested, teeny girls, anyway. She daydreams at work about helping him with his make-up.

The fantasy is less about dressing him in girl’s clothes and more about him coming to her to ask for help. About anything.

May waits. She becomes a model of patience. 

But things get weirder. 

Tony Fucking Stark shows up at their apartment flashing his credentials and batting his eyelashes, flirting the way he probably does with everyone in a skirt and enthusing over her veggie loaf. He describes an internship and Peter's earnest application to it.

Peter himself looks shocked when he walks in the door, tearing out his earbuds. He's a babbling mess around Tony Stark. Who isn’t? Not her.

But May wonders.

Peter goes and comes back from the Stark retreat, flushed and pleased with himself. And he can't stop talking about how great Mr. Stark is. It's a welcome change from distant silences and feeble excuses.

If this is idol worship, that makes a lot of sense, but so does a crush. Even though billionaires are eccentric, she sincerely doubts Peter was coerced into anything. He told May and Ben about the tutor, right? He knows he can come to her, right?

But he keeps not coming to her.

So, a couple weeks after the retreat she literally knows nothing about beyond Peter repeating, "It was so awesome," and even more nights where she checks his room and finds his bed empty, she calls up Tony Stark. He did give her his number, after all.

"When and where can I pick you up, Ms. Parker?" His voice is snake smoothe. "More importantly, what will you be wearing?"

She decides on a spaghetti strap black dress that she's pretty sure she bought in 1999. Yeah, her body's changed since then, but it still looks good, bigger butt and all.

Stark doesn't seem to mind. He pulls her into a limo and rests his hand on her lower back right above said butt. This man has dated models and actresses, but he eyes her like a present waiting to be unwrapped.

It's nice to feel wanted so nakedly, or at least to know, without a doubt, someone wants her naked. His unsubtlety is weirdly charming. She finds it hard to continue meeting his eyes and decides to sidestep the flirting altogether. "Tell me about Peter."

"Good kid," Tony says without missing a beat. "Smart as a whip. If I had a kid, the perfect kid, it'd be him."

And something about that hits May in the chest. She gives a wheezing laugh. "You're out of luck. He's all mine."

Stark winks. "Not if the internship leads to something else."

"What? Before he graduates high school?"

"Why not? I graduated from MIT when I was his age." It's said with a smirk, but May knows it's the truth.

They go to a charity gala for PFLAG. There are people in bow ties. A net of rainbow balloons is strung across the ceiling. A toast is given. When the balloons fall, they come down in a haze of glitter.

It pours into May's hair. She catches her reflection and feels like a princess. She cracks up when she sees.

He seems a little confused but entertained.

May is introduced to five different people, all in suits and long gowns. She remembers none of their names but smiles.

After them is a woman with blonde-red hair and freckles. She shakes May's hand and smiles kindly, but May knows when she's being measured. The glitter in this woman's hair makes her looks like a queen rather than a party girl. "Are you a donor?"

"Monthly," May says, honestly. She signed up when she found the sewing machine. "I just think they do wonderful work for kids and their parents."

Stark has become strangely formal. "May Parker, this is Pepper Potts. Pepper, May."

"Charmed." Pepper takes and releases her hand. "You look well, Tony," she says quickly.

"You too, Pep," Stark says. He stares as she turns away.

It’s very obvious. "How long did you two date?" she whispers.

 

Stark pauses. "Years."

Oh. Well, then. "She's beautiful."

"And she has a good heart. You have a good heart, too. I can see where Peter gets it." He takes a flute of champagne from a passing waiter and hands it to her.

"From me? We're not related by blood. His uncle was. I was lucky to have them both."

Stark walks to the balcony and she walks with him. "When did you split?"

She downs the champagne a little too quickly. But she needs bravery. "He died."

"Oh! Oh. Oops. Damn. When?"

"It will be nine months tomorrow."

There is horror in Tony's eyes. "I see."

She takes his hand as they stand, looking out at the city. "He understood me. We understood each other. I told him, if I died first, he had to get with someone else right away."

"And you?"

"I think I spent a long time as a kid trying to be as 'good' as possible. I went to Catholic school--"

"Like a Catholic school girl in a uniform? What did that look like?"

She swats him. "I said my prayers and I did my chores. I felt guilty and scared for stepping on ants and making my dad mad. Then I decided one day that I hated both those feelings. So I stopped being good and started being happy."

"And you haven't been guilty or scared since?"

"No," she says. "I just stopped punishing myself for wanting things." She leans forward and kisses him.

His mouth is unexpectedly sweet. The hair on his jaw scratches deliciously.

She leans back and he kisses her neck. After each kiss, she feels warmth on her neck like a brand.

His breathing is strained, though. He pants, but like he's run a marathon or as if he's about to cry.

May pulls back. "You okay there?"

He’s straining. "I don't think so. I don't think I can, um. I'm not, uh. Not tonight. Sorry."

It's nice to see even billionaires have vulnerabilities. "Why don't we stop here." She suspects talking about "wants" and desires was a bit too much. "Her name was Pepper, right?"

His head jerks up.

"Right?"

He nods slowly. "She was my assistant and then she was my CEO."

"She seems smart, too.”

He doesn't disagree.

Instead of a limo, he drives her back in a silver Lamborghini dropped off by a body guard with a solemn frown.

It's not the first time she's been on a date with a man in love with someone else. It's the first time she's felt like she's warring with him for her kid, though. That’s not her battle to fight, though. Being there for Peter when he does open up to her is.

She kisses his cheek goodnight. "Please take care of my kid. You have trouble with him, let me know."

"Thank you for trusting me with him." He squeezes her hand and drives away.

She remembers being a guilt-ridden little girl and lets it go inside her. Be honest with what you want, she thinks. She doesn't want Stark, she wants to know what's going on with Peter.

When she asks again, outright, he remains defensive. Just the internship, he insists. Even when he comes home with a bruise on his jaw.

The bruise is gone by the next morning. If he heals quickly, May wonders how many more there have been. She's afraid. Not many, right? It's still Peter, right? The kid who, in middle school, started alphabetizing his books?

She catches him in just his boxer shorts with his friend, Ned. He is gay, right? But she doesn’t feel a whiff of chemistry in that room, just boys being teenagers. Few of them need real reasons to keep their clothes on much less take them off, platonic or not.

And then there's the day he finally asks for her help. 

Finally.

It's for Homecoming. 

He’s on a date with a girl—maybe he’s bi? That’s fine, too, anything is—and a popular student, too. She has to search with him on YouTube to figure out how to tie a tie. She coaches him on conversation topics and what is and isn’t creepy. Even polite kids need a refresher once in a while.

She teaches him to dance. House parties, clubs, and bars don’t steer her wrong and Peter is bopping like he’s been doing this for years, not minutes. And when did he get so wiry and confident in his body?

It’s a breakthrough. Not a heart-to-heart, but a solid, real step in the right direction. She is prepared to keep moving forward, a little at a time.

She is less prepared to see Peter standing in the middle of his bedroom, back to the open door. The sun outlines the red suit, ringed with blue and black. In his hands is a mask with slanted eyes.

“What the fuck?!”

Peter spins around. “Oh. This?” 

“Yes! Yes, that!”

“Halloween costume!”

Lie. “Nope! Try again!” 

“I got a job at--”

“No! Tell me the truth!” She takes his wrist in her hands. 

He pulls back, breaking her grip seamlessly, immediately. He has gotten strong. When did he get so strong?

Peter also backs up, like a cornered wolf with a limp.

She pushes forward. Takes him by the shoulders. “What is this? Was this the Stark internship? Are you another Iron Man?”

“Spider-Man,” he says, softly. He can’t meet her gaze, but she can see his eyes go wet. “It started before I met Mr. Stark.”

More anger won’t help. Yelling never did with her, not when her dad did and not when her mom would. When they call her these days, all in her business, they still yell. It’s natural for them.

She takes a breath. Then another. She keeps holding onto Peter.

And he doesn’t make her let go. He doesn’t move. He waits.

He’s still hers. She’s still his.

“We’re going to sit down,” she says. “You and me. Then you’re going to tell me when this started, how, and who knows.”

He does. 

Every question, the answers come haltingly, words punching up out of his throat. First, they’re single syllables. (“Ned, Stark, they all know about it.” “About what?” “How it bit me.” “What bit you?” “The. The thing. The spider.”) 

Then he stutters. (“The strength was first. I accidentally bent a stop sign. Later, I thought, I don’t know, maybe I should try wrestling.” “Try what.”) 

Then he buries his head in his hands and cries in earnest. (“I could have done something, May! I saw the mugger’s face before I knew what he was going to do! I didn’t stop him!” “No! No, stop. You don’t know. You didn’t. Shh, shh. Stop. Please.”) 

When he’s out of tears to cry, he begins to tell her about ATM robbers and bicycle thieves. Saving a mother and her kid from a fire, the bodega owner and his cat. Helping a drag queen find her shoe. Stopping a bus accident. Giving a woman directions. Doing backflips for tourists in Central Park. Riding on top of the subway. Being given a churro in thanks. Playing basketball when some neighborhood girls were short a player. Once, a little boy gave him a crayon drawing. Fighting alongside Iron Man. Feeling the ferry split around him. The Vulture.

May doesn’t stop being angry, but she does keep listening. Once Peter really starts talking, it all pours out. He’s held all of it in for so long, convinced he’s an adult when he’s so used to being a kid.

She knows how that is, at least.

When she takes his hand, he doesn’t pull away. They’re a unit. Whatever happens next, they fight together.


End file.
